Rainbow Days

The most beautiful rainbows I ever saw were at Bryce Canyon National Park.  My family was camping during the summer monsoon season.  Most days the afternoon thunder showers would provide welcome relief from the heat of the day.  But this day the rain started early and kept on steadily.  

The canyon trails become slick and unsafe in the rain, so activities were limited. I’m pretty sure there were endless card games in the tent for a while, until my mother decided that we would take a drive down canyon.  We ate our picnic lunch in the car, but we got out at every single vista point.

Eventually the sun broke through the clouds, and that’s when the light show began.  Looking east from the canyon rim across the dessert, thunderstorm cells were still collected over the mesas. Lightening strikes competed with glorious rainbows - not just one, but double rainbows, sometimes more.  There were rainbows at every vista, and they kept getting better. (Scientific note: this is because as the afternoon wore on the sun was lower in the sky.)  

Somewhere in my garage is a box with my mother’s carefully cataloged slides from family vacations.  I have not looked for the pictures she took that day with her trusty Instamatic camera.  Experience tells me that the Ektachrome slide film will be sadly faded.  Memories are better.

The truth is that we all stop to look at rainbows.  They fill us with awe, and joy, and a sense ofpeace. I’ve seen drivers pull over on a busy street to look at a rainbow, traffic slow on the freeway, and office workers stand in the rain to look for one.  Then we go indoors and we shake out our umbrellas and we ask each other “did you see the rainbow!?”

Here's a nice photo of a rainbow at Bryce Canyon - (taken by someone else:)

By Marc Averette (talk · contribs) - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Hike395 using CommonsHelper., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5588645